How to avoid ratings users give just for gaining points
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[quote author="Tobias Hunger" date="1284644104"]lyuts: You are welcome, even though I am not sure why you are thanking me:-)
I just hang out around here when my computer is busy munching through Qt and Creator.
PS: I am only replying to get 5 more points! :-)[/quote]
Oh, you are not involved in QtDN developement, are you? If not, give me back my "Thank you" :-), just kidding.
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MariusG: Don't make the rules too complex!
Somebody who takes the time to rate up hundreds of items to get the points he needs to become a moderator or whatever has demonstrated a commitment to the site (or just an enormous amount of boredom), just like somebody posting lots of comments.
And of course comments can be just as useless as mindless up-rating... Yes, you could get really funky and implement a comment evaluator framework to discount "Me too"-like comments, but is that really worth it?
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[quote author="lyuts" date="1284644375"]
Oh, you are not involved in QtDN developement, are you? If not, give me back my "Thank you" :-), just kidding.
[/quote]I am, but I was busy launching the "new labs":http://labs.qt.nokia.com/ :) (hope you like it!)
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[quote author="lyuts" date="1284641607"][quote author="danilocesar" date="1284640853"]I have ready talked to Marcus about this. I even tried to start a thread about this too.
Well, He said the rating points are limitaded by 100 rates/day. as a complement I suggested that the rating points should be limmitaded by, at maximum, 10 or 20% of your total points. It solves the problem of high ranked yours without real contributions. [/quote]
It doesn't solve the porblem completely. Let's say that you limit rating points with 10% out of your total points and initially you have N = 100 points. After K days you can get 1.1^K*N.
(the numbers are floored where applicable)
Day 0: 100
Day 1: 110
Day 2: 121
Day 3: 133
Day 4: 146
Day 5: 161
Day 6: 177
Day 7: 194
etc...You can try different number of points, bu after 1 week you can double(approximately) the number of your points without real contribution.[/quote]
The percentage thing is not weekly limited... Anytime, if you have 10 rating points you should have 100 points of contribution. It's something like:
@int totalPoints = CP + qmin(ratingPoints, CP * 0.1);@
- where CP = contribution points.
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Maybe it's a good idea to explain the thinking behind those points and actions. :)
The system we have in place right now only rewards activity. It does not look at quality, only quantity. We want to see who spends time on the site and provide instant gratification. It has its flaws like most systems. With the number of users we're aiming at possible misuse of features like rating will even out over time.
Besides, the rights associated with the ranks are not fully implemented yet.
The requests for some sort of unread-thread-feature is fair though. I have noted that in out tracker.
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[quote author="lyuts" date="1284646464"]danilocesar: I'm probably not getting the percentage limit. I treated them as a day limit and "a user can get not more than 10% * N, where N is his number of points"[/quote]
Ok, let suppose you never rated a page before. In that case, lets call your points as "real contribution points", or CP.
CP = 345.
So, lets say you stop doing that kind of points and start just to rate pages. You can reach, at maximum 34 more points. Doesn't matter how many pages you've rated, or days you spent doing it. In the final score, you can't make more points until you make more CPs. -
[quote author="danilocesar" date="1284647184"][quote author="lyuts" date="1284646464"]danilocesar: I'm probably not getting the percentage limit. I treated them as a day limit and "a user can get not more than 10% * N, where N is his number of points"[/quote]
Ok, let suppose you never rated a page before. In that case, lets call your points as "real contribution points", or CP.
CP = 345.
So, lets say you stop doing that kind of points and start just to rate pages. You can reach, at maximum 34 more points. Doesn't matter how many pages you've rated, or days you spent doing it. In the final score, you can't make more points until you make more CPs.[/quote]Oh, I finally got what you meant. The percent-limit is permanent until you get more points by posting.
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Once you start giving points, tokens and titles as a way to reward users for their contributions, you turn it into a kind of game. Users, even subconsciously, start competing with each other and with themselves. This is something good and healthy for the community as a whole.
The problem is that if there's a trivial way of gaining points, some users will exploit it and the overall value of the ranking system will decrease.
In this case it's particularly bad: users get points for ranking articles. As a consequence, not so well intentioned users (and they always exist) will promote articles not because of their quality, but just to get points.
It may sound as a minor bug or misfeature, but the fact that this thread is already two pages long shows that users do pay attention to this kind of ranking system and you should try calibrating it as much as you can to make sure the real contributors get the points. There are a couple of solutions proposed in this thread which appear to be easy to implement.
Just my 2 cents.
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[quote author="MariusG" date="1284643823"]I can confirm the "100 points a day from rating"-limitation, to prevent simple hacks.
And we have a feature request for "max % amount of points from rating".
[/quote]Why not also introduce a "Max % amount of points from tagging"
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[quote author="MariusG" date="1284644671"]I am, but I was busy launching the "new labs":http://labs.qt.nokia.com/ :) (hope you like it!)
[/quote]It looks great. Why even my old labs.trolltech.com links are now automatically redirected ! :)
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[quote author="Alexandra Leisse" date="1284647086"]Maybe it's a good idea to explain the thinking behind those points and actions. :)
The system we have in place right now only rewards activity. It does not look at quality, only quantity. We want to see who spends time on the site and provide instant gratification. It has its flaws like most systems. With the number of users we're aiming at possible misuse of features like rating will even out over time.[/quote]
I doubt it, especially with actions like project Elf. I think ratings, but also points, are less useful because of this. In a "post":http://developer.qt.nokia.com/forums/viewthread/2944/#18552 that should have been a reaction to this thread, I pointed out a "forum posting":http://developer.qt.nokia.com/forums/viewthread/2926/ that had no real value (yet, for lack of information), but still was rated up four times already. How is that helpful for anyone?I think rating content should either not yield points, or it should be possible to rate "average" and "poor" too. The current way, added to the "abuse" Tobias described, just makes the signal/noice ratio too low to yield a useful topic rating IMHO.
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A more sophisticated rating system seems to be thought about at the moment:
- "Closing threads":http://developer.qt.nokia.com/forums/viewthread/2673/
- Alexandra's answer in "Please stop write +1 comments":http://developer.qt.nokia.com/forums/viewreply/15428/
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I'd just remove this scoring system entirely, because it simply encourages spam (of tags/ratings/whatever). Instead, I'd go on community-based ranking: I rank other users because of their work (replies, articles on the wiki, etc.), eventually with something like "you have X points each day to rank other people" where X depends on your current score.
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[quote author="peppe" date="1294062682"]I'd just remove this scoring system entirely, because it simply encourages spam (of tags/ratings/whatever). Instead, I'd go on community-based ranking: I rank other users because of their work (replies, articles on the wiki, etc.), eventually with something like "you have X points each day to rank other people" where X depends on your current score.[/quote]
Something like that is expected to come up in future.
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I hope that I not duplicated stuff in this discussion, but I've just not enough time.
Please have a look on
"[=b Rate this up] - Cannot rate your own content":http://developer.qt.nokia.com/forums/viewthread/3057/